Booze or browse? Half of all Russians would rather quit alcohol than the internet, poll shows

A recent poll indicates that over 90 percent of Russians use the internet every day. About half of them said that if they had to choose between giving up alcohol or the internet for one year, they would stop drinking.

According to the results of research conducted by the Boston Consulting Group and quoted by RIA Novosti, the proportion of Russian citizens who use the internet daily is currently about 92 percent. Some 83 percent of respondents claimed that they spent from two to eight hours a day surfing the web, or even more.

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With such levels of immersion, it’s hardly surprising that those who said that a hypothetical end of the internet would lead to a “global disaster” has increased from 48 percent in 2013 to 65 percent in 2017.

When researchers asked Russian citizens what they were ready to sacrifice in order to retain internet access, 44 percent of respondents named alcohol, 31 percent said sweets, 27 percent claimed they would give up coffee, 24 percent suggested regular sports and 20 percent expressed a readiness to part with their personal cars. Interestingly, 8 percent of respondents said they would rather give up sex than the internet, while 3 percent said they were ready to stop all communication with friends if it stood between them and the World Wide Web.

When researchers asked Russians about the purposes of their internet usage, 73 percent named communication on social networks and 68 percent said they were purchasing various goods in internet shops. Other uses included looking for news, watching movies and online banking.

A different study conducted by the Russian company Public Opinion Foundation in 2016 showed that 48 percent of Russian internet users found the information they found on the web credible. Seventeen percent said they did not trust the data from online sources and 20 percent said they were not using the web to get information or news. When asked which source of information they would trust more in case of conflicting reports, the results were almost even: 32 percent said they found television more credible and 30 percent said the same about news websites.